Kitty Macfarlane: May 2023 Artist of the Month

 

Kitty Macfarlane

Namer of Clouds (2019)

Navigator Records

 

 

I follow Karine Polwart , one of my favorite folk/traditional artists of all time. When Polwart recommends someone, I take notice. My artist/album of the month is a bit unusual in that the featured recording came out in 2019. I had not heard of Kitty Macfarlane until I sampled her on Polwart’s Website, but I’m sure glad I did.

 

Macfarlane hails from Somerset in England and is both a lovely singer and a smart, thoughtful person. Let’s start with the title track of Namer of Clouds. It’s an offbeat title, but it befits the song. Ever wonder where we get categories such as nimbus, cumulous, stratus, and so on? Give credit to Luke Howard who thought of them back in 1802. The song imagines him as a small boy doing what kids do, gazing into the sky with amazement at the shifting shapes of clouds. Howard took it to the next level: The changing shapes, the chaos and calm/The shadows cast as winds collide/Tries to explain with words not written/Put name to face, the need to define.

 

You’ll get all of that, though the first things that will strike you is Macfarlane’s own sense of calm and a voice whose purity invites comparisons to a young Joni Mitchell. Mitchell, ironically, released a 1969 album titled Clouds that included the song “Both Sides Now” with its quotable line: I really don’t know clouds at all. Macfarlane does.

 

Macfarlane has keen environmentalist instincts. “Wrecking Days” catalogues the damage done by the things we cast into the sea and reappear on the strandline (the highwater mark on a beach); “Man, Friendship” simultaneously muses upon climate change and hope, which is quite a trick. “Seventeen” parallels coming of age with the observation that nature cycles–the growth of trees, the growth of lichen, the migration of birds, tides, and so on–are both humbling and bewildering to the young. Some of the songs actually incorporate natural sounds. You’ll hear a rushing waterfall on “Morgan’s Pantry.” In this case, sea morgans are legends, not people. This is Macfarlane’s take on a traditional song about rather nasty sea creatures that lure sailors to waterfall portals to another world. “Glass Eel” ponders both continental drift and the miraculous 4,000-mile annual migration of small transparent eels. (Puffins find them delicious!)

 

Macfarlane dazzles us with voice and wonderment, not flashy instrumentation or dramatic arrangements. Her lyrics employ an economy of words that invites us to intersect our narratives with hers. “Starling Song,” for example, is just twelve lines long, but there’s much room to draft stories in lines such as Like the rush in a sea shell or a hum in the maize/Or the mutter of pages turned in haste. “Frozen Charlotte” is the wordiest song on the album, but they come from poet Seba Smith that recount a decidedly weird 1839 event in which a vain young woman was so determined to attend a dance despite the frigid winter weather that she arrived frozen to death. (Some versions say she was found in her bath.) In a level of the macabre only Victorians could conjure, alabaster white frozen Charlotte dolls enjoyed a 70-year run of popularity.

 

Macfarlane draws inspiration from all manner of things large and profound. Among the latter is “Sea Silk,” and you’ll hear background clicking. It’s the sound of needles from a woman she met off the coast of Sardinia spinning delicate silk strands that appear brown inside but glow gold in the sunlight. By now you won’t be surprised when I say that Macfarlane spins some gold of her own: I’ll spin saltwater into sun/Until the time I am undone. How good is Macfarlane? Even Iggy Pop, the Grandfather of Punk, is a fan.  

 

Rob Weir